okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Monday, March 26, 2007
Meniscus musings 2
Hammer managed to keep training for quite a while after he hurt his meniscus. I've never hurt my meniscus (it is the only part of the knee that I haven't hurt), but it seems as if Hammer's experience is fairly common. The meniscus gets damaged, the orienteer keeps training a bit (hoping the injury will get better), eventually the orienteer is forced to stop and seek treatment.
Fortunately, it seems like a meniscus injury can be treated successfully in most cases.
Thinking about meniscus injuries brings up an interesting problem for anyone who trains - it is tough to know when to train through an injury.
If I had to guess, I'd think that most orienteers with some sort of injury train when they'd be better off stopping and getting the injury fixed. It isn't because orienteers are stupid. It is because orienteers tend to be tough on themselves. The wimps don't face the problem of training when their injured. The wimps don't train and they don't get injured.
If Hammer were a wimp, he probably wouldn't have a bad meniscus.
I trained with a broken meniscus for 4 months in 2005. It hurt like hell sometimes during training and it took a while before I went to a doctor. It ended with operation for me. The operation worked great and I have no problem anymore. With the meniscus that is. The rest of my body is a different story.
